Free The Glass Butterfly by Louise Marley

did, and he loved it very well indeed.
    She had been a young girl when the renovations of the old watchtower began. Everyone in Torre del Lago had been thrilled to have Italy’s most famous composer come build his house in their village. Step by step, they had torn the old building apart and rebuilt it, painted it, plumbed it, even connected it to the marvels of electricity and the telephone. Doria was thrilled to be the one allowed to care for Puccini’s “golden tower,” as he called it, with its yellow stucco and scrolled iron entryway, its neat shutters and clean, elegant lines. The artist Nomellini came to paint the walls of Puccini’s studio, and everyone in Torre heard about how the dampness that pervaded everything around Lake Massaciuccoli crept into the new villa and ruined his work. He had to return to reconstruct his pictures on tapestries of canvas.
    Villa Puccini made Doria’s own home, where six children crowded into two bedrooms, seem little more than a noisome hut perched along a dirt lane.
    When she reached the gate of the villa, there was no one about. The house was so quiet she could hear the lap of the water below the road. The signora ’s painted shutters above the little balcony were closed against the sun. No sound came from the kitchen, nor did Puccini’s brown-and-white dogs come romping out to meet her as they always did if he was home. No doubt he had taken his big motorboat out to the little island where he went to fish or hunt or just find some peace. The dogs, the rough-coated spinone, loved going out in the boat, hanging over the bow with their long tongues dangling and their ears flattened by the wind.
    Doria kicked off her shoes and stripped off her black cotton stockings before she settled herself on the bench. It was blissfully cool in the shade, and she wriggled her toes in the patchy grass as she pulled the book from her pocket. She turned the pages carefully, silently, and read.
    It was called Il Fuoco — The Flame . She didn’t truly like it. It was the sort of thing Puccini read. He liked this writer because he also wrote plays, and the maestro was forever seeking out plays he could turn into operas. This one, though, would never work. Even Doria, with her paltry education, could see that. There was a great deal of sex in it, which made her squirm. Despite her mother’s dour warnings, Doria knew nothing of sex beyond what she had read in novels. Still, she meant to read Il Fuoco all the way through so she could talk about it with Puccini, if he should ask.
    She was lucky to be able to read, to have learned so easily from Father Michelucci. Most of the girls in Torre, and the boys, too, for that matter, could barely write their names. Despite this bright new century and nearly new country, many Italians had no schooling at all.
    For a happy hour she relaxed beneath the Judas tree. In this relentless heat, she doubted anyone beside Puccini would be out of doors. If he wasn’t in his boat, he might have tramped up into the hills in search of a breeze. He often did that, his gun slung over his arm and the dogs panting happily at his heels. She hoped he had remembered his hat.
    She sighed beneath a gentle wave of drowsiness. Bees buzzed in the roses twining through the wrought-iron fence, and an occasional lazy bird twitter punctuated the sweet silence of the afternoon. Doria’s eyes drooped, and the book sagged in her hands. She gave in to the moment, and lay back on the bench, her knees up, her skirts arranged so they covered her modestly but allowed a bit of air to caress her hot calves. With a feeling of pure self-indulgence, she drowsed through the warm afternoon as if she were a lady of privilege.
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    She woke to the damp scrape of a pink tongue against her cheek and a blast of hot dog breath. With a start, she sat up, crying, “Buoso, stop!” Her protests did nothing to prevent the dog from slathering her with affection.